Erwan Gaultier: Next Generation Customer Life: A 3 yrs. Chief Customer Officer’s Agenda

So during these 20 minutes, I would like to share with you another view of the next three years, agenda of CCO. So what is a chief customer officer as a starting point, I would just would like to quickly remind us, what is this role to wrap it up with my own words. This is to make it really simple. The 360 degree control tower of what's happening and what should happen between a company and its customers.

Well, in this presentation, I, I'm not saying that companies should have CCO. Some companies appointed CCOs without giving them the inflection power. They should have done to get tangible business outcomes. I'm only using the CCO as archetype of the customers at EXCOM. So now what are the key topics on the EXCOM diary for the next three years to reach a matchable and customer experience and sustainably race customer engagement? So first little challenge managing touchpoints has become quite complex.

The number of so-called channels has literally exploded and customer facing industries now have to manage four times more interfaces than a few years ago. Owned interfaces have increased, but also managed third party interfaces. And of course, this driven by digital well in a context where GFA sets turnouts and raise the bar years after years, what is directly or indirectly exposed to customers much must be really much more industrialized than in the past.

Some players on the market already did the appropriate investments in product information management solutions or digital assets management platform to reduce operational costs and avoid quality problems across the different set of interfaces, same situation regarding the analytics and the data management. L'Oreal particularly a very good example of a substantial effort that has been done with significant industrializations investments that now are really enabling much more efficient interfaces management and orchestration. And just for example, take a look at their eCommerce performance.

And of course this is very link and a big part of the omnichannel story. Well, immediately story has shown that having one foot in the omnichannel world was a major tactical advantage to face current crisis. Some players have recently proven agility in building smart bridges between channels and where really completely able to, to make it really seamless.

Whereas before it was really siloed, I particularly like the, the case of bright link that has recently created an in-store appointment journey starting on digital, what is particularly relevant here is the smart context provided in advance to the boutique teams to prepare the appointments. I could point many other companies in similar or other industries that are still unable to offer this basic journey. So on the agenda, I'm convinced that this is an absolute urgency to move from conceptual reality in terms of omnichannel journey design. On top of that, innovation is flourishing everywhere.

Look at Gucci, for example, Gucci, augmented reality with snap or legal with a virtual fashion store. Only a few of those innovation will grow at scale, become mainstream and become major business drivers, but has important as services are in the way of working.

I mean, constant testing content, constant test unlearn mindset to make mistake is fundamental to continue to learn and stop. Of course, what doesn't doesn't work. My conviction is here that too many executives focus on the what and do not spend enough time on the, how that is to say new ways of working new of collaborating with customers, agile execution, et cetera, on several pages of my presentation, you will see this kind of Y young icon to underline the key success factor.

I will be happy of course, to detail that in the Q and a session with the examples and the outcome, let's take a look in the rear view mirror at the interactions that brands have with their customers in some industries, such as utilities, telecom, insurance, or transportation. Having an interaction with suppliers has synonym of problems, service, interruption, council service, et cetera. One of the most revealing quotes I heard from a customer was the best situation is when I have no reason to interact with you.

In addition to that squashed earth practices also killed interaction channels with customers and led to customer burnout over time. Best proof of that is their diminishing conversion rate and the pushback effect. Some long-winded brands are still generating customer attention with a timeline has really become critical. Last situation is the no choice situation that some brands put into practice. That's why many banks for example, had empty branches.

I mean, of course before COVID 19 and oversized physical coverage selling new offers and services has become quite challenging as they lost the conversation with the customers in the next three years, establishing a brand conversational strategy that creates value for both parties is a key topic, starting point, being able to answer to this basic questions, what is perceived value of mind solicitation one to come with this kind of situations, two third of C of listed companies have now customer experience manager sometimes at EXCOM level.

So the customer experience transformation is really a journey. I would say a two, two track plan duration journey and wrap up this customer experience transformation in, in some key questions, for example, first step, how to implant customer centricity in a long existing company, centricity, that's a big challenge, a big cultural challenge, and then how to adapt a listing and responding mindsets, how to develop capabilities, internal capabilities, to see what customers see and not what we think they're seeing. And there is a big gap.

Another key point is how to describe what the customers fairly experienced when contacting the brand, not only the company centered part of the journey, but also the interfaces with third parties, by the way, very few on in Europe are going so far while considering customers. They still, they are still focused on their own activities. Another key point is how to orchestrate a dry action plans with the appropriate governance, very horizontal to secure executions today.

Many players are at this stage, but there are some next stages, especially how to measure operational changes with data and outcomes and correlate with actions. When you already have a personal centric customer data model, it simplifies the data driven monitoring best players. For example, can correlate pain points resolution with purchase recurrence and turn rates. And for the last two steps, how to sustainably transform operations to maintain a virtual cycle. That is to say design from day one offers services, processes that are customer native. The challenge is here.

In fact, also to be able to decentralize customer experience management at all level at point of sale level at call center level, even at production unit level. So in the coming years for most of the companies that launch customer experience initiatives, CEOs will expect much more quantitative business outcomes than in the recent years. Looking now into more detail into the data opportunity. Most of the industries invested a lot in gathering data, a huge quantity of data and deployed some first use cases.

Two priorities remain for their coming two years along the data analytics funnel data quality of a data quantity data quality is not a technical problem. Eyes are really focused on data scientists, but should also look at the data steward who's responsibility, the data quality combined with a good data governance. Good quality means and is it has been really measured in many, many advanced companies, 25% more algorithm accuracy, one third execution time reduction and employee satisfaction. So don't forget the datas. You want to retain your data scientists.

And the second imperative is of course, the shift to a continuous flow of use cases, not one use case every two or three or four months, but really a continuous flow of opportunities to create value. And it goes through the development of multidisciplinary teams working in agile mode up skilled and data valuation and leveraging shared data experts, such as data S that are secures etcetera and teams with a very strong return and investments mindset somehow used to work in a kind of spot mode.

So acceleration and automation is part of under this continuity of the next two to three years story, many topics on the table, APAs marketing automation, boats. So I would like here to spend a few minutes on boats and underlying some key learnings selecting. For example, the appropriate solution provider is not easy, especially when a high number of them just decree of a night to have AI insight solutions.

So on the market we could, and customer could measure that that most advanced experiences showed great progress in terms of intense and intense complexity coverage best, but customers are still expecting more efficient in the dialogue, less parrot effect, for example, and a better context, understanding and emotion management innovation goes fast, but never as fast as in dreams, developing its learning culture. It's learning curve for customer facing industries is a must for many historical companies, as well as newcomers. It is becoming a major customer interface.

The telecom industry for is at the forefront. Most of the telcos are expecting that boats will be able to manage 80% of their conversations by 2023. If I take the case of orange last year, they manage 15 million end to end conversation by both five times more than one year earlier.

And here, again, working in a giant mode is a prerequisite to maximize internal learning curve and also customer facing improvement speed. From what I've experienced recently, leveraging boats to employer to empower employees is also a major working area for the ne near future boats can help them dealing with more complex cases and voice analyzes can now be used to help employees adopt appropriate tone of voice. Some startups such as OTO, AI for example, are doing that well.

And if we look at the channel share evolution by interaction complexity, we can see that complexity management has become and will become a hot topic for many human-centric channels. Let's have a very quick look into the past over the last decade channels, progressively digital channels, progressively absorbed and almost all simple interactions in the next five years only complex interaction will remain human-centric channels. Complex problem solving and management are key for in terms of capabilities, expectations.

Some companies intend to develop more services as they will have available manpower. This is a very loud level posture in a post COVID society that expects more inclusivity and solidarity. The challenge is then to be able to value and sell those additional services instead of just giving them well, customers are already expecting more sense and proven brand venues and growing trends that COVID 19. This is a globally, a growing trend that coughing 19 is amplifying.

The challenge for brands is to move from storytelling to story making in, in fact, to provide the, the proof that the, the brand is really becoming authentic data and technologies will enable to, to reach a much better level in terms of personalization, partnering with innovative players will also become more critical, but that will help brands entering into the new caring era. But that will not be enough. That's why working on posterior is absolutely fundamental.

Well, when well done personalization is transparent and is reducing customer efforts and time being able to increase the perceived value when the customer has she is data is a key challenge for marketers for the next two years. Well, in terms of customer experience, measurement NPS has become really a standout that is massively deployed across industries. One of the latest adoption we could see in Europe as the car group, when they announced NPS to be a part of the official operational KPIs and part of the CEO viable income until 2022.

However, from what I see and could experience survey based NPS has some limitation, punctual evaluation coverage of a small two small share of the customer base and a frustrating actionability when you on. So I'm convinced that it has to evolve to meet investment expectations from customer experience initiatives.

And well, there is a fantastic opportunity to build the bridge with the global data strategy and the data stakes. I pointed out earlier while talking about customer experience, transformation journey, a data driven augmented NPS could help having surgical diagnosis and action plan being plugged on business KPI and even established scores at individual customer level. Some startups, very interesting startups, such as O six cognition for example, have already began to pave the way.

So as a conclusion to make it short well definitively the objective is to raise engagement, thanks to relevant interactions, smart conversation with emotion, authentic customer collaboration, cetera at stake for the next three years. This is two to four points, additional a B D good, got a good challenge.